Pre-production on Beyond dev Quantic Dream's PS4 game began middle of 2012

Pre-production on Quantic Dream's mystery - but confirmed - PlayStation 4 game began in the middle of 2012.

Vice president Guillaume de Fondaumière told Eurogamer in an interview today at the Digital Dragons event in Poland that the developer, which made PlayStation 3 exclusives Heavy Rain and the upcoming Beyond, was one of the first studios in the world to receive a PlayStation 4 development kit from Sony.

"We received PS4 development kits - at the beginning it's specs then it becomes early kits - very early on," he said. "We were among the first studios in the world to receive those kits."

During Sony's PlayStation 4 reveal event from earlier this year Quantic Dream's David Cage showed a tech demo of an old man's face being rendered in real-time on PlayStation 4 with a completely new engine. He said the power of the console enabled developers to create more realistic characters and thus better emotional engagement with the player.

We received PS4 development kits - at the beginning it's specs then it becomes early kits - very early on. We were among the first studios in the world to receive those kits.

Quantic Dream vice president Guillaume de Fondaumière

With specific regard to Quantic Dream's PS4 game, de Fondaumière said the developer had been working on its new technology for some time.

"Technology has been going on for quite a while now," he said. "We've started to work on the pre-production of that new game since the middle of last year."

Development of the game is going "great", he added. So when does full production begin? "That's too early for me to tell. It's a very ambitious project, so it's going to start when it's ready."

Little is known about Quantic Dream's PS4 game. At a previous event, de Fondaumière told Eurogamer the PS4 offering will be a story and character-driven game in the Quantic Dream style. However, he added, "Innovation is part of our DNA. We've never duplicated ourselves. We never clone ourselves or other people's projects; we always try to create unique experiences.

"For us, a new console is another reason to try and innovate. What is certain is that whatever we're working on on PS4 is not going to resemble what we're doing on PS3... We're going to try and reinvent ourselves."

In January it emerged that Quantic Dream had registered the domain name for SingularityPS4.com. In the past, Quantic Dream's domains such as heavyrainps3.com and beyondps3.com noted the studio's game titles followed by their platform.

The title Singularity hearkens back to the studio's Kara tech demo, which creative lead David Cage told Eurogamer was in part inspired by Ray Kurzweil's speculative book The Singularity is Near. This suggests a project in keeping with Kara's themes of technology racing outside of humanity's grasp.

Quantic Dream's Kara tech demo from 2012.

Of course, Singularity is already the title of a recent first-person shooter by Raven Software and Activision currently holds the trademark in multiple territories.

Meanwhile, de Fondaumière added further ambiguity to the ongoing speculation that Beyond, due out in October, will be ported to PS4.

Following mixed messages, we asked the Quantic Dream executive whether the game would be released for Sony's next-gen console.